On Friday 27 February, Big Think partner PwC hosted its second global webcast focused on the question, ‘What would you do if you were not afraid?’ The webcast was part of ‘Aspire to Lead: The PwC Women’s...

Designers of the new federal system for sending emergency alerts to our cell phones devoted at lot attention to setting up the technical aspects, but not enough to figuring out what the messages should say....

5. Unwholesome titans: Thomas Piketty’s book documents how wealth tends to concentrate. That rich-get-richer dynamic is especially dangerous if they use their power to skew policy, see “US is an oligarchy.” No politics of parts or economics of echelons can work unless the health of the whole governs.

6. Replaceable titans: Is inequality a necessary evil? Must taxes on the wealthy be low? Well many innovators are driven by passion, not only money. They previously built stronger economies under higher taxes. If entrenched titans work less, other hungrier wannabe-titans can replace them.

7. Freeloader titans: Corporations and entrepreneurs seeking to evade or lower their taxes are free-riding or cheap-riding. Taxes aren’t paid only for direct benefits, they’re to keep the whole ship afloat. It’s in nobody’s rational interest to damage what they depend on.

Orwell reviewing Hayek’s Road To Serfdom said free markets were “a tyranny probably worse...than that of the state.” He knew tyrants are easier to stop than a “tyrantless tyranny” of bad ideas. A constitution-like balance of powers within economies must ensure they serve “the people.”

Illustration by Julia Suits, The New Yorker Cartoonist & author of The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions.